President Obama said when he took office that Afghanistan would be his number one foreign affairs priority.  It may become his nemesis.  President Obama has said that he is not going to make new commitments until he is sure that the plan is the correct one.  In this, he is correct.  Gen. McChrystal has pointed out that we need firm, long-lasting commitment to win.

None of the bewildering array of clocks that deal with Afghanistan seems to tick slowly enough for victory.  A long time frame is needed.  However, more than half of the American people no longer wish us to be there.  The same is true in many other countries.

A failure in Afghanistan could ignite Pakistan in ways that none of us wishes to see.  Pakistan is a tinderbox of social discontent, regional resentment and fundamentalist activity.  It is also bankrupt, has a weak government and possesses a nuclear arsenal that it already nearly used against India.  Its military plays both sides of the war against fundamentalism and struggles to be preeminent in running the country.  We cannot allow an Islamist takeover in Pakistan.

During the first few years after 2001, the Taliban withdrew and optimism encouraged a “light-foot approach,” a belief that only a little needed to be done.  Very wrong.  And Washington did little to get rid of the warlords it had allied with out of expediency.  Wrong again.  Washington diverted its attention and its resources to Iraq, and Afghanistan has paid the price.  Now things are much worse and will cost much more to repair.

The gap between development need and funding has been fairly consistent.  Afghanistan got one-quarter of what it needs.  Most of that funding actually was spent outside of Afghanistan, particularly U.S. funding.  Afghans resent both the presence of highly paid foreigners and their inability to be masters in their own house.

In Afghanistan, what geography didn’t limit, sparse funding did.  When Bosnia-Herzegovina received $279 per capita, in Afghanistan, the figure was $67.   94 percent of US spending has been for  military purposes and only 6 percent for embassy programs and development assistance.

There was also a failure to train competent government officials.  The Afghan government fell back on traditional tribal leaders to manage the countryside.  Not surprisingly, they proved to be both dysfunctional and corrupt.  There is no civil service academy.  Afghanistan should set one up immediately, perhaps with cooperation from Pakistan and India.  In addition, model provinces could be set up to demonstrate what good government is like.  The province of Bamiyan would be a good place to start.

Still, Afghanistan has made remarkable advances.  Income has trebled, to about $365 per year.  80 percent of Afghans now have access to some kind of health care, although 16 percent of Afghan women will die during childbirth.  Infant deaths have declined but still one of four dies before the age of five.  55 percent of the population has access to a cell phone and 38 percent report access to a television.  There are over five million children in school.  In primary school 35 percent of the students are girls, but in secondary schools, that falls to five percent.

The Presidential election is a prime example of what is still wrong.  Months ago there were reports of forthcoming fraud.  Press reported  flagrant election cheating, and not just on the part of the Karzai supporters.  Problems involved in a second round are not insurmountable.  In many disputed areas voting could take place all year.  Partial re-voting is a possibility.  In any event, Karzai will probably  remain in office, perhaps with a national unity government.

There are factors in our favor.  The Taliban are not one group, and neither is Al Qaeda. Not all the fighters are ideologues; many of them are fighting for economic reasons, or because their tribal leaders make them.  There is room for negotiation, and for changing mindsets.  Polling figures show that 82 percent of Afghans say they still prefer the current Afghan government

Many people in Afghanistan, on all levels of society, told me the same thing.  They said,

“We want you to be here.  We want you to succeed.  But many others have come here and did not succeed, and we will always be here.  If you do not succeed, and we want you to, we will have to find a way to live anyway.”

After seven years of war in Afghanistan, President Obama brought a clear focus and statement of intent to the issues of the region last spring.  Additional U.S. forces would go to Afghanistan, but repeated calls on NATO allies to increase  commitments have mostly gone unanswered, as support for the war diminishes.  Gen. McChrystal claims that defeat is likely if troop levels do not increase.   Not everyone in the White House is so sure.  European leaders have not made it clear to their voters that the action is a war, and not a social assistance program.  The war is spreading, not ending.

Fundamentalist activities in Pakistan now target the ruling landlord class.  This social revolution in a country with hereditary landholdings and an impoverished peasant class could spread to other areas of Pakistan.  The new American plan includes large sums of money for Pakistan.  Who will administer those funds and how they will be controlled is of critical importance.  Corruption and misappropriation are endemic in Pakistan.

The U.S. plans for a significant increase in the civilian presence in Afghanistan.  The process is not where it should be.  The Secretary of Defense asked Congress in March of 2009 to fund the Department of State personnel.  He should not have had to do that. Considering the situation on the ground, an immediately accelerated effort is necessary.  The development and Afghan governance parts of the White House plan need quick articulation and implementation.  The government knows how many troops will go, where they will go and what they will do.  The civilian side is insufficiently clear.

Training the Afghan national army and police is obviously an imperative.  The army is performing well in coordination with outside forces.  The police are doing less well.  In both cases, basic literacy is a problem.  It is unacceptable that many of the military in Afghanistan are illiterate.

Along with a modern military, Afghanistan needs an economic structure that can support it.  The current planning is for combined security forces of 220,000 individuals.  Afghanistan’s economy simply cannot support that.  Afghanistan needs to pay for itself and run itself.  Winning the war is only one part of the issue.

Afghanistan has the potential to become a self-sustaining country.  Afghanistan used to feed itself, and it can do so again.  Farmers have said they would prefer to grow a different crop than opium.  They need price supports, alternative crops and a multi-year transition.  More provinces each year are free of opium production.  The production assists the Taliban war effort and places producers in a questionable relationship with the government.  One of the most visible failures of the Kabul government is its inability and/or unwillingness to move on this with regard to government officials and relatives of President Karzai.

When we look at maps, we see the dotted lines of nation states and think that somehow problems are contained within them.  For people who live there, and not just the Pushtuns, those dotted lines barely exist.

Their history reinforces this.  Persian was the governmental language of the Mughal empire.  The Dari of Afghanistan is an older and, to Iranians, perfectly comprehensible version of Persian, as is the Tajik of Tajikistan.  The great cities of central Asian culture, Bokhara and Samarkand, now in Uzbekistan, were and are Persian-speaking.  Herat, in western Afghanistan, is considered one of the main wellsprings of Persian civilization. Modern demarcations do not tell us the whole story.

There are more Tajiks in Afghanistan than in Tajikistan, millions of Uzbeks and Turkmen as well.  Masses of people fled oncoming Russians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Many of the residents of northern Afghanistan and western China have close ties across the former Soviet border.

Uzbeks who had been fighting in Tajikistan’s civil war in the 1990s went south to join up with the Taliban.  Later they fled to Pakistan where they are active with Al-Qaeda.  The connections of the area go back much longer and more deeply than we know

The specter of Afghanistan has overshadowed all efforts for democratic reform in the countries in the region, which see Afghanistan as an example of what can happen if governments do not severely control their populations

Both Russia and China have supported these governments, both individually and through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.  This organization has taken an increasingly higher profile in the area, including military maneuvers.   It is concerned with the U.S  presence in the area.  Washington needs to develop a multidimensional policy for Central Asia with a clear statement of our goals.  All of these countries, front line states for Islamic fundamentalism, should be more involved in the problems of Afghanistan.

Both Pakistan and India have persisted in using Afghanistan as a playing field in their rivalries.  Peace will not come to Afghanistan until they stop.

Iran has also played a role in Afghanistan, both helpful and harmful.  After its cooperation in 2001, Iran bitterly resented being added to the “axis of evil.”   While Iran can be helpful in Afghanistan, it has also made clear that it can cause trouble.  A Persian sword is one which can cut both ways.

Afghanistan will not go away because Western donors are tired.  For Afghanistan to cease to be a problem, security must improve and steps made to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall into the same situation that led to the Taliban takeover.  It will be expensive and long-term.

Many Americans understandably want to find a way out of the situation.  When I left Tajikistan in July, 2001, I told Washington that we did not have a choice about whether to fight Islamic fundamentalism, but only a possible choice about where we would fight it.   That is just as true today.

Ambassador Robert Finn is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University. He served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in more than 20 years, from March 2002 until August 2003. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 1998-2001 and his other diplomatic postings include Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, Turkey; Lahore, Pakistan; and Zagreb, Croatia. He opened the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 1992. Read more of Ambassador Finn’s commentary on Afghanistan.

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